Friday, July 31, 2009

You know you are a framebuilder when.......

I guess I know what it this month in a big way , now that frame # 18 for july is about to go to the painter. Yes, nearly 20 frames built this month-that's why I have not made any entries on the blog lately. What's up for tomorrow ? Drive up to Ashland and teach a tig course at UBI......at least I'll only have to build one frame in two weeks instead of nine , but I will oversee the building of eight frames by the students. You can call me a poser, you can all me as s.o.b. , all sorts of stuff-but this summer you'll have to top off the pile of explitives with 'framebuilder', too. I wrote about the genuine fake framebuilder last time so here are the things that let you know when you are truly a framebuilder: # 1, The faster you build 'em, the longer the list gets. # 2, You get emails and phone calls from places where there's now way they should even know you exist.# 3, folks bring by deceased people's bikes to hang in your shop. # 4, Your shelves are filled with many frame tubes, so many that you don't stand a chance of using them all before you quit, die or both. #5, You are excited to build yourself a new frame, even though there's no way you need it and/or can afford to build it up. # 6, People order a frame and tell you: " Take your time...." and actually mean it. #7. There's a few projects hanging up in the shop that date back to the '90's that you swear you'll finish this winter. #8 , All of your bikes are filthy and you never take the time to work on them or clean them. #9 , Your hands are never completely clean except at the end of the two-week vacation that you never get, at least not in the last 4-5 years. # 10, You have set aside enough time to do X number of jobs and still take in another one even though it will burn you out , make you sick and most likely not get done on time. Well, those are the ones I could come up with. Add your own if you like . Of course, these are merely my obsevations and are not necessarily applicable to all, or even many framebuilders-just ones that are as primitive as me. Cheers, Paul.